Veracruz people deeply divided over who should be Mexico's president.

By Dudley Althaus |
June 27, 2012
| Updated: June 28, 2012 6:03am

José Luis Sáenz Escalera, in hat, leads the way as politics dominates the conversation at the Cafe La Parroquia in Veracruz.

VERACRUZ, Mexico - Flanking the pier of this famed Gulf port city, the airy Cafe La Parroquia beats as the political heart of Veracruz state, which itself has become a bellwether of Mexico's fitful journey to democracy.

Through two centuries of revolutions and civil wars, invasions and hurricanes, the Parroquia's regular patrons have wrangled over the fate of their city, state and nation.

With more than 5 million potential voters, Veracruz ranks only behind the state of Mexico and Mexico City in electoral weight. Now, with an uninspiring presidential campaign wrapping up and marines defending the port's streets against besieging gangsters, the cafe chatter swirls around who gets the vote in Sunday's election.

"We're respectful of each other, but opinion is very divided," said lawyer Jose Luis Saenz, a former Veracruz city police chief who through the decades has joined friends at a back table for morning coffee and conversation.

Mexico state seems likely to favor Peña, who served as its governor until last fall. Most voters in Mexico City will go for Lopez Obrador, who was their popular mayor from 2000 until 2006.

But all three viable contenders leave many of the Parroquia's pundits - doctors, lawyers, merchants and politicians - sharply at odds and deeply ambivalent.

"Peña Nieto is going to win," shrugged Saenz, allowing that he supports leftist Lopez Obrador. "Is he going to be able to make it work? We'll see."

'Feel disillusioned'

Despite Peña's supposed advantage, Veracruz - like all of poorer southern Mexico - may still have significant sway.

The state's voters went against the PRI in Vicente Fox's victory in 2000, which ended the party's 71 years in the presidency. Then Lopez Obrador won here six years ago, though with barely 36 percent of the vote and but a sliver more than President Felipe Calderon and the National Action Party.

"People were tired of the PRI," said Ezequiel Guzmán, 71, head of the influential hotel association here. "Now they feel disillusioned again.

"What the country needs is even more alternation of parties in power," he said.

The only political force that hasn't held national power is Lopez Obrador's, which won all of southern Mexico six years ago.

But one poll Wednesday in the Mexico City newspaper Reforma showed Lopez Obrador edging Peña here and across southern Mexico, 38 percent to 37 percent.

That may explain why the PRI has pulled out the stops. Enormous billboards promoting Peña and other party candidates clog the port's highways, overwhelming those of Lopez Obrador and National Action's Vazquez Mota.

The PRI 'machinery'

Most local media provide fawning coverage of Peña and other PRI candidates. Opponents say PRI operatives are passing out tin roofing, bags of cement and other goods in small towns and villages to lock in support.

PRI and party bosses poured 50,000 people from across Veracruz onto the pier in front of the Parroquia on Friday for Peña's final rally in the state. Lopez Obrador on Thursday, and Vazquez Mota on Sunday, held smaller events there.

Peña pushed his way slowly through the crowd: hugging women, slapping backs, posing for pictures, jutting victorious thumbs skyward. His pitch offered only boiler-plate promises. But few seemed to mind. They came for the spectacle.

"He's a young guy, he's prepared and he has looks," said Guzman, the hotelier. "But those behind him are the same ones as always, who have caused so much bureaucracy and the corruption that has gotten us into this problem."

With its busy port, long coastline and ready access to central Mexico and the Texas border, Veracruz has been a smugglers' playground for centuries. In recent times, the illicit trade has been in South American cocaine and Central American migrants, all heading north.

Succored by official complicity, the smuggling functioned like a well-oiled machine. That's changed since the Zetas gang sank roots in the port and other areas.

Security forces and other gangsters are now moving to dislodge the Zetas, setting off gunbattles, massacres and assassinations. Voters now may be deciding where to place the havoc's blame.

"We always have a lot to talk about because Veracruz has become very violent," said Saenz, who left his police post a decade ago amid accusations of narcotics-related corruption. "No one is safe in this state.